Originally Posted by: jrbb1111 
I've done some more searching and found somebody with a similar problem on basically the same model. The issue was the defrost thermostat was bad and not allowing the fan to come on consistently, which let the evaporater freeze up and also the water line. Of course the condensor being really dirty would cause the compressor to run more also.
Wondering if the compressor is running more to try to compensate for one or both issues above and causing the overload to kick off?
I think this is what I will do:
1. clean condensor good
2. take a look at the evaporator to see if frozen up, and inspect defrost thermostat
3. if #2 looks good, test the overload relay
Thanks for your replies. This is helping me understand how everything works better.
Condensor was nasty, I know it hadn't been cleaned in 8-9 years. Hard to get to so wind up blowing it out with an air gun with the shop vac running behind the condensor fan. The next morning it wasn't working...food was not warm but definitely not as cold as it should have been. Door water dispenser not working.
Defrost timer appeared to function fine. Rotate it to defrost and the condensor fan would stop, and about 20-30 minutes later it would click and the condensor fan would start up...but no compressor or evaporator fan.
Pulled the timer and check it with a multimeter. When I touched the common terminal (#3) and the others it would periodically quickly flash a number than go to open circuit. Tried touching other terminals (1-2, 2-4) and they showed continuity correctly (one set for defrost, other for cool). Have the wiring diagram which shows a resistor at the common terminal, so maybe that causes the continuity to not show up with my multimeter. Anyway, plugged the timer in and it shows 120V across the common and appropriate other terminals pending which position you have it on.....determined it was good.
Pulled the inside cover off the freezer to inspect the coils. Only about the top 1/4 of the coils had a light/moderate frost on them (the compressor hadn't been running, and then the unit was unplugged for awhile now). Set time to defrost and the heater (definitely hot) came on and melted the remaining frost.......heater must be good. Turned the timer back to cool and the compressor kicked on and evap coils started to frost, after about a minute the evap fan kicked on.
**A couple minutes later the water dispensor started working......was it frozen in the door and just defrosted??
Turned the freezer temp control all the way off, evap fan and compressor stoppped. Turned it back on and everything started back up.
Unplugged it again and pulled the defront t-stat out to test. Had a reading of around 240 (believe it said "k" ohms). Physically it looked fine so it was reinstalled. Determined this was good.
Let it run on cool for probably an hour (inside cover off, door shut) periodically checking it. Evap got a decent coating of frost on it but didn't look frozen or anything.
Turned freezer and frig temp control all the way down to "1" and it continued to run (compressor and evap fan) for at least an hour. Ran out of time and wanted to put all of the freezer food back in, so reinstalled back cover, put in food, and reset temp control to "5" (scale is 1-7...5 is what we have used for years). Shut the door and left it alone, briefly opening them to get food out for dinner and a couple of other times. Compressor and evap fan continued to run at least another 6 hours solid (I went to bed), but it was cooling nicely it seemed.
This morning nothing was running at first, everything was cold/frozen as it should. A minute later it kicked on (compressor/evap fan) as normal.
Door water still working.
At this point waiting to see if the issue returns. The only thing I truly changed was cleaning the condensor. Hoping the dirty condensor was making the compressor run longer/harder to keep cool (though we have never needed to change the temp. control for years) and thus kicking out the overload. Wife did verify that the frig was possibly colder than normal this morning.
